Maybe in Time
by Ruby Casablanca
Summary: All she knows for certain is that she is alive. She's alive, and maybe in time she'll be okay with that.


A/N: Just a thing I thought of after I watched my ship get torn apart three different times in that last episode. No, I'm not bitter why would you think that? Also, just as an aside, I'm sorry if my take on death offends any of the religious sort. I just don't think that Thea would have any faith left in a higher power, hence the darkness. Anyway, enjoy :)

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Maybe in Time

Thea had watched a movie once where the two main characters could wish away their imminent deaths and pain with a simple "okay." Looking back, she really hated that movie, how it glamourized something that neither of the characters understood, and now she hates it more. Neither of them had ever died before, or at least never had to come back from the dead. Neither of them understood what that was like.

Death was the easy part; it just happened. There was nothing to stop it, nothing holding her back from slipping into a world of permanent unconsciousness. Death was simple. But coming back, pushing herself up from that darkness, fighting towards the light that she knew would never come again if she didn't seize the moment, that was hard. It was exhausting, and the second she opened her eyes under all that water she wanted to die again.

They had given her a choice. She only had to come back if she wanted to. Now that she was back in the land of the living, she didn't know what she wanted. She thought she had wanted life, but life was cruel to her. Death was peaceful – lonely, but peaceful. But she knew that she couldn't leave her brother. Oliver was so broken already, one step away from taking an arrow to his own head. She wouldn't let herself be his last straw. She wouldn't let herself be the thing that made him lose what was left of his humanity. So she lived for him, even if she was angry at him. Oh, she was so, so angry at him.

She knew the truth he'd hid about Roy the moment she died; she didn't need to be told that he was alive and well. There wasn't a heaven where she went, but she just knew that Roy wasn't with her in that eternal darkness. She would've been livid had she not been completely relieved. She wouldn't wish that fate on anyone.

That doesn't change the fact that nothing is okay.

Ghosts of memories haunt her apartment. They scare her at night and she wakes up in cold sweats, screaming on the top of her lungs, fighting monsters in the shadows. Sometimes she sleepwalks, and no amount of pills and sleeping draughts will stop the episodes. Oliver watches her like a hawk, but she still wakes to find herself holding a blade to her brother's throat more than once, his eyes wide and confused. He doesn't know how to help her through this; he could barely help himself when he was brought back. But her death was more traumatic. She doesn't have the endurance that he did to deal with this kind of torture.

She hasn't been able to get her blood out of the rug. She hasn't had the time to get a new coffee table to replace the one she was thrown through. She doesn't go in that part of her home, tiptoeing around that mausoleum, but she makes no moves to fix it either. Part of her doesn't want to.

She knows she's damaged, but she doesn't truly acknowledge it until Oliver tells her that she needs to leave the city, that she should go someplace quiet and secluded until he can settle his affairs with the League. He says he wants to protect her, that she'll be safer on some private island in the middle of nowhere. What he doesn't say but she can hear loud and clear is that he'll be safe from her if she leaves, that she will be safe from herself if she leaves the ghosts behind.

She won't go however. She refuses to go, even when she knows that Oliver is right. She's not okay but she can't own up to it. Not until Roy comes in.

She doesn't expect him to come, but he does. He walks into her home one insignificant night and she can hear him inhale sharply. She doesn't have to see his broken expression to know that he thought he would never see her again. After all, she didn't think she would get to see him again, and that is part of the reason she is so afraid to look up. Not until he is right in front of her, close enough to prove that he's real.

He treats her like she's made of glass, holding her gently in his arms. He's always been so gentle with her, but this is different. They stand in the moonlight of her empty penthouse and hold one another, each one clinging to the very thing that they thought they had lost. They don't dare speak; they don't dare move, even when they both start crying. They just listen to each other breathe, feeling the strong and steady beat of a very _living_ heart underneath.

It's so strange, she thinks, to hold a ghost. Roy may not have died but he was close enough to death to know how terrifying it was to open your eyes to the light after what felt like an eternity in darkness. He made a promise not to lie to her anymore, but this is one thing she knows she can forgive. She knew how badly his "death" had affected her; to know that he mourned her in the same way was enough to make her damaged heart shatter all over again.

She thinks that's the reason why she agrees to go with him. He pleads with her they can start over, a new beginning away from the poison of the lives they used to lead. The ghosts can't follow her where they would be going, and he'd be there every step of the way. It wouldn't be perfect – they were never perfect – but it would be something, and a life without Roy was no life that she wanted.

Healing doesn't come easily. Sometimes it doesn't come at all, and she wonders why she tries in the first place. She thinks about death a lot now. There was something about her family and death by sword. First her mother, then her brother, then her. Sure, her father – the man that raised her, not the monster Malcolm Merlin – didn't meet his end with steel, but she figured that a bullet was metal all the same.

A blade claimed Roy's life, or almost did. He's still got the scar, thin and puckered under her roving fingers, as she has hers. Matching tattoos, the sign of the survivors, though she has to say that hers is much greater, taking up the space just below her heart. She can feel it pull and stretch every time she inhales, and she is paralyzed by the fear that one breath too deep and the tissue will pop and she will be back on a metal table, lifeless in the armory.

They told her she was strong for coming back, but she can't gain strength from a simple "okay" and a wish on a shooting star. Life isn't a movie where she takes her life back in a sequence of life-changing revelations. She needs time. Time to heal and time to find who she is. The waters of Nanda Parbat changed her, and she needs to know how much. Only then would she be strong enough to go home.

People ask her if she's okay and she doesn't know what to say. The truth was always too complicated for most people anyway. Maybe in time she'll be able to move on and live her life without fear. Maybe in time she'll open her heart to trust again. All she knows for certain is that she is alive.

She's alive, and maybe in time she'll be okay with it.


End file.
